One of the ways in which elites can influence the public acceptance of policies is through cueing. First, the literature claims that such cueing works well in EU politics because people lack information on European policies and because these are less salient than national ones, but is cueing really stronger in EU politics than in domestic politics if compared directly and, if so, to what extent? Second, the literature emphasizes that national level actors do the cueing when it comes to EU politics, but do EU level actors also have cueing power in swaying the opinion of domestic publics and in what ways? This paper examines the extent to which the public acceptance of new policies in the defense domain at the EU and Member States level is susceptible to cueing. To this end, I field a pre-registered factorial survey experiment in 16 EU countries (~ 32,000 respondents) varying three factors. The first factor introduces policy proposals which involve strengthening security and defense at either the European or the national level. The second and third factor vary the initiator of the cue (government/European Commission) and their (non-)support for these policies. Generally, I expect cues to work better for European policies given their low salience and cues from the government to have a stronger effect than cues from the European Commission. I also expect cueing effects to vary across socio-political groups in what regards previous attitudes on defense policy, trust in the EU and national governments, and country of origin.